The Malik Report

Andrea Wilson at the Wings' website with an update after today's practice,

The Red Wings won’t have to worry about leaving The Joe again anytime soon, as they will play their next five games at home after completing a five-game road trip in New York Thursday night. The team hopes its recent break from the JLA will help it improve on its 6-10-7 home record.

“I think that can help,” defenseman Danny DeKeyser said. “Anytime you can, you’re struggling somewhere and you get away for a while and then you come back it kind of refreshes you a little bit and clears things up so hopefully that’s the case and we need to come out here and play hard and just get wins and get points.”

Currently sitting in 11th place in the Eastern Conference behind 50 points and a 20-17-10 record, the cross-conference game against Los Angeles Saturday is an important game to kick off a pivotal home stand.

“Well the game against LA is huge,” coach Mike Babcock said. “We don’t win enough so I thought our team played hard the last couple games but we didn’t win. We gotta find a way to get some points. As you can see in the standings we’re not in a good situation. We gotta get some traction and get going. We had a lot of kids play real well last game and in the end we still found a way not to win so we gotta find a way to win.”

According to Elias Sports Bureau, the last time an NHL game with that many shots in which only one goal was scored was back on January 12, 2010, when the Rangers and Devils combined for 96 shots before Patrik Elias finally won the game for New Jersey in the eighth round of the shootout.

"What you saw tonight was two goaltenders at the top of their game," coach Alain Vigneault marveled.

… Bring Non-Perishable Food Items on Saturday to Help Feed the Hungry …

DETROIT– The Detroit Red Wings will host a canned food drive to assist in the fight against hunger with Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan. The canned food drive will take place during the team’s home game on Saturday, Jan. 18, when the Wings take on the Los Angeles Kings at 7:00 p.m. (FOX Sports Detroit/AM 1270).

The Red Wings and Rangers played an absolutely elegant hockey game for the first two periods and a grit-and-grab-and-grind-fest for the third, and Jimmy Howard was absolutely sensational for an incredibly depleted team (no Alfredsson, Andersson, Datsyuk, Ericsson, Franzen, Gustavsson, Helm, Tatar, Weiss, etc. etc.)...

But the Rangers got the kind of goal you expect to decide a tale in which the Wings were out-shot 48-38, with Mats Zuccarello tapping the puck off Brian Lashoff's stick and past a goaltender who was understandably playing the pass on a 3-on-2, the Red Wings either could not or would not place butts in front of Henrik Lundqvist's field of view all night long, and as such, the Wings go 2-and-3 on their road trip and have been shut out in consecutive games.

There comes a time when it doesn't matter who's in or out of the lineup--the team has to get it done--and all this talk of structure and leadership and youth playing well is swell and all (hey, Nyquist, Jurco and DeKeyser were 3 of the 6 players out for the final minute), and the fact that Howard has gone from slippery rock to rock solid again is fantastic...

No replay on this yet, but Jimmy Howard made one hell of a save on Carl Hagelin, and Howard's stopped 35 Rangers shots over the course of 2 periods as the Wings and Rangers remain scoreless going into the 3rd:

I think this is kind of obvious given that the Red Wings recalled Cory Emmerton (to sub for Joakim Andersson) and that the player in question probably won't return this weekend but it's sure going to garner headlines, per TSN and RedWingsFeed:

The Detroit Red Wings placed forward Pavel Datsyuk on injured reserve prior to Thursday's game against the New York Rangers.

Datsyuk will miss a fifth straight game on Thursday for what the team termed a lower-body injury. The three-time Selke Trophy recipient also sat out seven consecutive contests earlier this season after sustaining a concussion on Nov. 23.

Recently named captain of Russia's men's ice hockey team at the upcoming Sochi Winter Olympics, Datsyuk leads Detroit with 15 goals this season and ranks second on the team with 32 points.

The Red Wings recalled center Cory Emmerton from Grand Rapids of the AHL in a corresponding move.

Grand Rapids Griffins players, sled dogs, ice sculptors, zoo animals, figure skaters, horse-drawn carriages, winter sport athletes, museums, libraries and local celebrities will all be part of the 2014 Great Skate Winterfest, which will run for 34 consecutive hours this Saturday, Jan. 18 and Sunday, Jan. 19 at Rosa Parks Circle in downtown Grand Rapids.

Everyone is invited to join this celebration of winter in our city and help the Griffins Youth Foundation provide opportunities for more than 350 kids – many of whom are underprivileged, underserved, at-risk, physically challenged or have other special needs – to participate in the great sport of hockey at no cost.

The fun begins at noon on Saturday with the sixth annual Winterfest, a day full of winter-inspired events, sports demonstrations and family activities, and concludes with the 12th annual Great Skate, a 24-hour skating marathon with Griffins players that runs from 10 p.m. on Saturday until 10 p.m. on Sunday. Admission to the Great Skate Winterfest is free, although donations are encouraged and fees apply to skating ($2 per person) and carriage rides ($5 per person).

Jurco has been great in his second AHL campaign, earning a brief call-up to the Wings earlier this season. He's a sensational puck handler who can make a ton of plays in the offensive end of the rink. Jurco needed time to adjust to the QMJHL level before he elevated his game, and after a bumpy first pro AHL season he looks to be turning the corner again.

About The Malik Report

The Malik Report is a destination for all things Red Wings-related. I offer biased, perhaps unprofessional-at-times and verbose coverage of my favorite team, their prospects and developmental affiliates. I've joined the Kukla's Korner family with five years of blogging under my belt, and I hope you'll find almost everything you need to follow your Red Wings at a place where all opinions are created equal and we're all friends, talking about hockey and the team we love to follow.